Nurses ‘hand’ out hygiene advice at hospital information events

05/05/2011

To mark the World Health Organization’s recent Hand Hygiene Day (5 May), the Southern Trust Infection Prevention Control Team hosted information events in Craigavon and Daisy Hill Hospitals to help raise awareness of infection prevention and to test the hand hygiene skills of patients, visitors and staff.
The Infection prevention and control nurses set up stands in the foyer of each hospital and invited people to test how well they washed their hands by placing them in an ultra-violet light box, called the ‘glow germ’. The nurses also demonstrated hand hygiene technique and promoted the 7 step technique that all healthcare staff should be following.

On the Craigavon site, staff from the microbiology laboratory brought along some interesting ‘things’ for people to see under the microscope these included agar plates showing growth of resistant bugs such as MRSA & EBBL gram negative bacterium. These visual tools helped demonstrate and make sense of certain bugs and helped create an enthusiastic, interested audience. Agar plates were also used to demonstrate bug growth from hands that had been washed in comparison to hands that hand not been washed. This also promoted interest amongst the general public in the hospital at this time. In addition to all this hand hygiene leaflets were distributed to all who visited the stand.

Colin Clarke, Southern Trust Lead Nurse, Infection Prevention and Control, commented: “Taking the simple steps of hand hygiene at the right time in the right place and the right way can contribute immensely to reducing the number of health care-associated infections. Today was all about using a number of different methods that would allow us to engage with people and encourage them to think more about the importance and practice of, good hand hygiene all of the time Most people were shocked by the number of germs they could see on their hands under the ultra-violet light and this was a very powerful way of highlighting to people how important it is to refine the hand hygiene technique.”